Best of 2024 — Bhawani O'Brien

Reflecting on a year of phenomenal guests, we are bringing you a selection of the Best Conversations of 2024.

The child of doctors, Bhawani followed her parents footsteps into medical school without a second thought. But after the dissatisfaction of decades as a GP, Bhawani discovered the field of voluntary assisted dying and it changed the course of her life. 

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Bhawani O'Brien grew up in Malaysia with Sri Lankan parents, both of whom were doctors.

Bhawani was also expected to become a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer or an accountant. Luckily for her, she adored her father, and followed his footsteps into medical school without protest.

But after decades working as a GP, Bhawani had lost her purpose and also her beloved father, who died back at home in Malaysia while Bhawani was stuck behind locked borders in Western Australia.

Not long after his death, she found a random pamphlet in her pigeonhole at work.

It was about voluntary assisted dying, which became legal in WA in 2021, and it changed the course of Bhawani's professional and personal life.

She immediately started her training as a voluntary assisted dying practitioner, and has since helped 100 people in their dying moments.

This episode of Conversations contains discussion about death, palliative care, voluntary assisted dying, VAD, medical practioners, doctors, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Ireland, Australia, Australian Medical System, Medicare, Covid, border lockdowns, Western Australia, families, family relationships, grief, grieving, mourning, funerals, cancer, motorneuron disease, alzheimers and dementia, migration, immigration, multiculturalism, racism, medical fraternity, terminal illness, living wakes, saying goodbye, good deaths.